For Richer, For Poorer

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Liz picarazzi H sh and Laura Xander talk about something they have in common they all own and run their business with a partner who also happens to be a spouse which suggests some interesting questions is someone in charge how do they divvy up responsibilities what do they talk about over dinner what do they fight about do they fight in front of the employees how do they make decisions who does the dishes do they ever wish they were not in business with their spouse do they know what would happen to the business if they were to divorce even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Inc magazine recently named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Liz picarazzi who is CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins Hans shy who is co-founder of Wonder an e-commerce Bakery based in Austin Texas and Laura Xander who is CEO of Jimmy beans wool a digital yarn store based in Reno Nevada and meline TSH a yarn supplier based in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled for richer for poorer welcome Liz Hans and Laura maybe the best way to start would be if you could tell us kind of how you've structured your work relationship are you 50/50 Partners do you have separate titles how do you basically divide responsibilities um Liz maybe we could start with you sure absolutely my husband Frank is my coo and um the delineation to totally simplify it is that he's an Implement and I'm the Visionary which is like a great place to be so that is really how we structure it right now he actually leads the whole team everyone reports to him and not to me and so that's really enabled me to focus on growth and on more you know Partnerships and strategic projects I can chat at some point in here about the um kind of how it came to be um but that's how we structure right now I think just the the one point that I think you're alluding to is you did not start the business together with this Arrangement correct correct um I started the business eight years before I hired him which interestingly people always assume that we started it together they kind of have a hard time imagining that I started it and that I hired him but that's a whole another topic but yeah I started it and then he ended up joining in May of 2020 at the height of the pandemic as many corporate people he was laid off and we needed to decide whether he was going to come and work for the business which was very much struggling with probably like 90% reduction in Revenue awaiting PPP you know we decided that was the time for him to join City bin and he did and for me part of the decision was that I was very weak in some of the areas that he was strong and so for us in it in a way it was less about the income which yes was important and it more was about filling a lot of the gaps that could have hurt us if I didn't fill them and are are you 5050 Partners in the business how how does the ownership work so I'm 100% owner but because we're legally married he's 50% owner understood wow and does he Liz like I keep hearing you say I hired him and he reports to me like how how is he with that like do you say that to him to his face no I'm actually just kind of bragging here on the podcast I don't often I don't often talk that way but you know what he definitely wants people to know that I'm the founder like when we're at trade shows he's really good about saying you know do you want to meet the founder because often I'm just sitting in there in the corner on my phone or something and you know he understands how important that coo role is so there's no way that he's going to think that somehow I don't know he's lesser really and I certainly don't treat that it that way I really see it as something that helped and maybe even saved the business because as we grew we got into a lot more operational challenges which not only do I not like I actively dislike so he he filled in all of those gaps you think the staff sees you guys as equals I would have to ask them but I actually think that they probably see like a healthy interchange yeah they know there's certain things that he it's his realm and other things that are mine and we you know we'll argue sometimes in front of the whole team not in a like a a nasty way but you know the other day we were having a conversation that when I thought about it I was like wow that really wasn't appropriate to have at a staff meeting with you know him and me and I know at one point I said you know you and I we should probably discuss this offline and he was like no we're gonna discuss it right now and that's that's something where to the team we all kind of laugh about it it is sort of fun but I could see for some people it could send some mixed signals all right I want to get back to that Hans why don't you tell us how do you and Louis divide your roles in our case well actually I started the business uh like 10 years ago in guala and L joined it because I couldn't really handle it anymore but up until we decided to move to the US it was really my business and he was helping me and he had his own thing going on he's a photographer but when we moved to the US basically we started over and like okay we're Partners 50/50 here but it was kind of of difficult to move away from the original Dynamic so it took us a while and actually to this date we go to couples's counseling which is great because it's like this space that you get okay that thing you said on Tuesday I didn't like it I want to discuss it and you save it you put a pin on it and save it until the next therapy session and that's super helpful because then you can like let go of things and the way we have it set up now is a lot of it has to do with each of our talents because we are very different people and he is a people's person I really am not he's an extrovert and I'm an introvert so I'm very comfortable like dealing with numbers and dealing with like the operational side of things and he's great with people so actually uh right now we are building a team and set and developing uh profiles and everything and the way we set it up is that we have a like we split it between internal and external so one is like outward focus and the other one is inward Focus I take care of the Inward and inward means product everything that has to do with the operation of the e-commerce business customer service and now to our the sales Partnerships all of those things do you have separate titles yeah technically I'm the CEO and he is the CMO but it's not really we don't really have titles because it's such a tiny theme that it doesn't really make sense and we're going to have to figure this out at some point because at the end of the day like we are very aware that we need someone to make the final call on stuff and usually and I'm talking about saying finances and signing on this document that type of things so usually I do it but that's most because I am better at being on top of that type of thing so I do it myself but we're going to have to figure them out at some point because as we bring people into the fold then we need to have a lot of clarity of who reports to who and we have made that mistake of like having not such a nice discussion in front of your staff which is the it takes so long to recover from those it makes so everyone so uncomfortable so and for ownership uh because of our Visa I am legally required to own 51% of the company so that's how we have have it set up Laura how about you you've talked about um Doug's role in the company but you did in fact start the business with him correct uh yes kind of um I mean I he still had another job so I started it and opened the shop but we've worked together since the very beginning so he wasn't necessarily in the store doing anything I mean he came on full-time and quit his day job I think maybe three or four years into it so the business was finally making enough money that we didn't need his income you know after a few years but from yeah from day one I mean he's worked on the website you know and worked on the technical side which is what he continues to do and from day one you know hindsight is 2020 of course but from day one he's also been like the Strategic advisor all big decisions we make together and even small decisions um we make together so I tend to be more of I guess the face you know I'm the one who goes to the trade like he's never been to a trade show you know he's never met our vendors I mean very few of them he has a team of two you know one or two people that he works with he works mostly from home whereas I kind of have a team of 70 but we talk about everything you know we divide our finances like he manages the cash flow and paying the bills he does the stuff that requires a responsible adult that I'm the one who manages the profit and loss and the financial statements and the budgeting and I'm looking at you know how much we're spending and what we're spending stuff on I mean in some ways he's really my mentor you know so I go to him when I need you know we talk about things when there are problems or we need like somebody who's not in the day-to-day to give a perspective so as far as titles are concerned I mean we're kind of like Hans like I mean I guess technically I'm CEO and technically I own 51% but honestly I mean that was we made those decisions back in 2011 like to join that you know Ernst and Young winning women we changed it from a 5050 to 5149 so that we're a women-owned business and then we made me CEO because I'm the one who's like forward facing but we go through everything together you know and we've always worked together we met at work so we just and we've never even really had conversations about who does what it just kind of happens organically we've never really talked about it we just kind of fall into those roles all right I want to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor we'll be right back I'm here with Rob Levan co-founder of work better now which provides top remote Talent from Latin America and the Caribbean Rob how do you know if you're placements are working out man I love this question you know Lauren I've been in the small business world for a long time and I love to help business owners Thrive and many of my clients are friends so it Thrills me to no end when they say things like wbn assistants are among my top performers or my assistant has given me 20 hours a week back to my schedule or best of all when I hear an assistant who started out in one role and then has taken on much greater responsibilities I'm guessing though there are occasionally times when the fit isn't quite right what do you do then another great question it doesn't happen often but when it does got to remember that every client has a dedicated success manager who helps our clients with the best courts of action which sometimes means replacing the talent and doing so very quickly what does using wbn cost for $1,900 a month you get a dedicated full-time work better now assistant you can have a matched assistant who is perfect for your needs within as little as 2 weeks and there are no contracts if any of the listeners mentioned 21 hats when you have your free consult you get $150 off your first three months and that is for each assistant that you hire where can we learn more just visit workb better now.com thanks Rob and we're back I have a question um Laura sometimes when I talk to other entrepreneurs who work with their Partners or spouses I like to ask the question what what you discuss over dinner oh yeah well the benefit of us working together is that we never run out of things to talk about so I think it really helps our relationship a lot um so we talk about work you know we talk about work we talk about we have a 13-year-old son so we talk about our son and then we talk about we dream about retirement and you know what we're going to go do when we have time off we talk about travel a lot you know and biking and skiing and running and surfing yep that's kind of our life before we open the business and we worked at different companies we would do side projects together just to earn extra money you know like travel money so it's part of our relationship you know is to work on projects together this just happens to be you know a bigger project I wonder if any of you have felt the need to set guidelines oh yes dividing personal and business and you know what's inbounds and what's out of bounds you have yeah what happened to us is that we we moved here in 2019 and then the pandemic hit so we knew no one the first year because we're just doing the firment market so we're like super busy working super hard and then we were stuck going from the office to home so we knew no one and it really took at all on us uh Luis is more of a people's person so he really misses going with people so he really suffered the pandemic and the thing is that it was not really obvious that it was the pandemic but we had to force ourselves to actually divide those things and actually say hey I need to go out I need to talk to people and in my case is like no I need to stay home and it took us a long time to be comfortable saying hey I am fine going out today but tomorrow I want to stay home so you are free to go that type of thing and it took us a while because we spent so much time by necessity just being together 247 like join at the hip then when that was no longer necessary it took us a while to adapt and it really took a all on us so one of the things that we've been discussing lately actually is that it's really hard we spending a lot more time at home working from home now for many reasons and when we hire the steam that's not going to be possible anymore and we're actually excited about that because we feel that separating the space like the different spaces really helps to separate the things because otherwise it's kind of frustrating because yeah of course you always have stuff to talk about but the worst thing that can happen to us is that we get tangled in our work discussion at 6:00 a.m. and it happens a lot we get up very early but we are like you know when someone had like a dream or was thinking about this and wants to tell the other and he's super excited oh my God you should like this happened actually this morning I was super excited like yes we're gonna do this and that and how do you think and how you feel and then the other guy is like I need to have my coffee first which is absolutely normal and if this was just a coworker you would tell them at 9 when they are at the office you wouldn't be bothering them when in their pajamas so it's been really hard to learn that but what we've learned to do is to say you know what I'm not ready to talk about this so let's talk about it later because it's not a good time because what usually what happens is that we end up fighting whenever we don't respect that time and we usually one is excited and the other one is like I really don't want to hear about this so we learn to say really this is not the time I don't want to hear about this and to say like you know what what no more work do they how about you Liz do you set guidelines so I would say one guideline it may be more of an informal one is that we have a daughter who's 16 we usually talk to her and with her and about her day before we talk about anything else and I know that there have been a lot of times in the past when we don't maybe even ask her about her day because we're talking about the business so I think that was a really important shift but we also do sometimes have fun talking about the business with her especially in the last year because there's been so much drama like you know with journalists and with different partners and City agencies so it's almost like there's gossip that we do that she's a part of do you guys talk with her like I have so much fun talking through profit and loss you know and profitability with my son you know and like really reinforcing cuz you know he's like math doesn't matter we're never going to need algebra like why do I have to take this stuff and I'm like okay so here's the deal we've got this is our productivity and it take you know I give them you know these word problems right I mean it takes us one D can die a hundred skaines per day if we have five ders and you know blah blah blah how long is it going to take us to do this and if we're paying them this then what's our profitability and we go through this whole thing and it's it's really kind of neat to be able to put like to round out I guess like his school stuff I mean we don't I don't it's not like I get put it on a whiteboard but when we have because I'm more comfortable in the financial world but so when we have Financial like word problems to solve it's fun to get his two cents on it too and he's been so great again because he's objective and he's a kid so he's just going to be honest I can say this employee is doing blah blah blah and he'll be like just fire her you know yeah or he'll be like Mom it's sounds like you're being kind of a you know so I'm like noted you know I appreciate that like that's really helpful do you guys do the same thing we do I I have her engaged more in marketing things and you know some of her skills with video editing that she's learned in school but she hasn't applied really in the real world she has been able to help us and not only with marketing you know for Instagram and whatnot but even videos that we sent to the factory to help illustrate things that we want that we found is a much better way than operating through text on base camp with our Factory so she's really brought to life some of the important evolutions of the product especially over the summer so you know we pay her to do that um she has been asking for more hours lately which is great because we're kind of short staffed but you know she's very involved in the business she hears us talking about it a lot and I she I think she sees the practical application of some of the things that she's learning in school that's so cool I love that really really neat so you guys brought up uh already the relationship between you and your spouse and the employees and obviously that can be um a tricky situation in that it can kind of put employees in a difficult position for example no one's going to want to run into your office and say you know your husband's really driving me crazy I'm wondering has that situation presented itself for me it hasn't um I'm trying to I can't think of a time but but Doug and I have a very we just have a very peaceful relationship we don't argue you know we don't fight uh it's all him like I would fight but he's not a fighter and so he's taught me how to not fight you know and how to not yet we don't yell and we just we have really clear lines of I want to just kind of say respect of what each one brings so we just naturally defer to each other we don't even have to talk about it like if he feels really passionate about X Y and Z then I'm going to defer to him in that area because that's what he feels passionate about and and vice versa you know so we just let things slide on either way and I think you know at the end of the day while I'm the the face and I'm the one who's there you know we all know that at the end of the day he probably is smarter than I am um and he's definitely more mature and so I'm always going to kind of defer to him even though I'm the one who's technically in charge but I'm sure that varies by topic I mean there must be aspects of running a yarn business as opposed to handling the technology underlying the yarn business that that you're more familiar with than he is absolutely and that's where it kind of comes into and this is going to sound like I have like daddy issues or something but he's just a really great mentor so on the daytoday stuff I'm going to handle it and there's a lot of stuff me like we just found out we're getting audited and I haven't even told him and I'm not g to tell him I'm just going to do it and I'm gonna handle it and he never needs to know because the risk we're not we're so by the book everything's going to be fine worst case scenario I mean it's just going to take up a lot of time and there no need for him to know about that and we're being audited by the state of Nevada for like sales and use tax and blah blah blah so there are areas where I feel very confident and I don't even need his input but there are areas where it's not that he is necessarily smarter I guess but he just he's a great mentor it it's like talking to Jay you know or talking to one of you guys where you're not in it dayto day but I can go to you and say what do I do about this I don't know how to handle this like what would a responsible adult do and and he and then I take his input and usually we go with kind of what he says because he has better judgment than I too he's got and I guess that's what it comes down to is he's got really really good judgment and you know he's one of those people that when he meets people he can tell if they're a good person or a bad person kind of right away he's got a good read whereas I don't and maybe part of it is just in our areas we know our and I yeah and we want to stay married I mean that was that was kind of a decision that I made maybe 10 years ago it was about 10 years ago when we were kind of on different trajectories and I really wanted to grow grow grow and you know I had all these big huge wild dreams Lauren you remember and Doug's like I don't want to take outside money I don't want to report to anybody else I don't wna I don't want you on the road um not that like he's in control of me but he's like I don't think that we will enjoy it and you will enjoy you know going from franchise store to franchise store and you know blah blah blah and so there was a little bit of tension um and frustration like on my part because I'm like why are you holding me back like why why don't you just want these big huge dreams the way I do and at some point about 10 years ago I was like you know what I can make a decision either I can stay married um and have a nice peaceful relationship and a healthy business that grows a healthy amount and if you want to call it a lifestyle family business call it a lifestyle family business or I can go for broke and I can try to be the next dry bar but realistically I'm going to end up being probably divorced you know seeing my kid once every other week and I'm going to be working 90 hours a week and that was a conscious decision that our marriage and our relationship comes first even if that means that the business is going to be smaller than somebody else's yeah we we had the exact same conversation at some point if that if decisions need to be made like that is the decision that is to be made and actually what what we we just did it again like we said okay we need to put ourselves first and to say we're going to rest the bit and gather our own thoughts and be comfortable again because it's been a rough ride for a while even if it means slow it down and actually we slowing down significantly for a couple months there's a few opportunities that introduce themselves uh the past couple weeks that actually were were it was like in a silver platter like say hey there's this opportunity but it means you have to slow down and wait a little bit and we're like okay we'll take it we'll slow down so we're going to have three months that are like slower and mellower and that helps we've been like very burnt out lately so that doesn't help but we made a deal a pack to be very respectful of how each each other feels about keep doing the business because in our in our case particularly we don't have kids we are not going to have kids and this is kind of our Legacy and the whole safe spases thing is definitely our Legacy so we just want to make sure that we're giving it everything that we have and we're not just doing it and going through the motion so if at some point one of us feels like that either one is free to say you know what I give you a year and after that I'm out and we we have to be comfortable with that if you're the party who says I'm out be comfortable with the other party not wanting to I don't really see that happening that only one of us remains but that is in the in the rule book right now Liz you've talked a little bit about uh the different ways that you and Frank see the business so I mean I have mostly a very glowing report for Frank if I was like his boss in a corporate setting he'd have a really good performance review but I there are a couple of areas where we persistently have tension the first one is really about like short-term versus long-term thinking and a current example of that I'm the long-term thinker he's the short-term thinker we're looking to move all of our operations from three places into one and you know it's a big fiveyear real estate decision on a lease and he pulls together kind of the analysis of the space that we should get and I realize it that it's it just occupies our current inventory and not anymore so I said well what's your growth factor you you know applied to this and he said none I'm like well short term thinking is that this is the size of our warehouse what's going to happen if we double next year we can be having this conversation again about moving that's what I'm trying to avoid so he's definitely very conservative you know he with any sort of investment he thinks about what's in the bank versus what cash is coming in as the entrepreneur I know the cash coming in will run the business as it comes in and he's going to say well we can't invest in this because we don't have the money in our bank account right now I would say the other area where we have persistent issues is kind of on our product assortment so we're very known for our trash enclosures but we also do package lockers and sheds and um Planters and over the last few years I've worked very hard to position City bin as a premium outdoor storage brand and not as that trash enclosure business and so but the truth is is that the margin on our package lockers is much less than our trash enclosures and he's going to be really focused on that margin because he's like putting our efforts toward that thing that sells the best by far which for us is the trash enclosure but we I'll say is that if we're ever to be acquired an acquirer is going to be impressed that we are a portfolio of Outdoor Products multiple products not that we're just a trash en closure company so I've got that long-term Vision here he's got the shortterm let's just focus on what sells and like there's one product one one of our package lockers that doesn't sell very well and he he will do anything to get rid of them he's going to probably fire sell them and he never wants us to make them again and he's really let me know that every chance he gets on how it truly unprofitable that was because all the R&D that went into it the tooling honestly that was all my initiative it all happened in 2019 I was very forceful on that project on the Investments and it has not paid off and so he'll bring that up to me it's not like a nasty like we don't really fight like that but he definitely has some good examples of my weaknesses and where my vision sometimes doesn't go so well and he's counting the inventory all the time so he'll be in the warehouse and he sees those package lockers and it almost makes him angry because they're not moving very fast and he's handson at that level that he can see you know the results of lizz's decision two years ago to pursue this Liz do you agree with him at this point do you think that you should end that line I mean the holidays are coming up so for package lockers that's our biggest season so I'm hoping that we do really well and I'll have the evidence to support my desire to keep the package locker but we have two of them and one of them sells much less that might be one that we decommission or maybe do like a special order one a year for people that want it that they just are going to have to wait that's a special order because we've already done the tooling on that so it's like a lot of The Upfront investment has already been made it sounds like your differences could be a really healthy tension in a business um having people comment issues from different perspectives is that the way you see it I do um I think it's a really healthy interaction just like I said if someone is an implementer and the other is the Visionary it's a really great combination you know as long as you appreciate the other and you understand what you each do you know my stuff with being the Visionary like we've realized that if I have some idea that I'm like urgently wanting to discuss with him and he's working on something in the weeds and I will get irritated because I want to discuss my grand idea as soon as possible he'll say something like why don't you go call one of your entrepreneur friends and share your idea because he knows that I wants someone to get excited about what it is and he just can't manufacture it nor should he you know if I'm interrupting him during the middle of the day to come tell him about my latest marketing idea you know that can be ex distracting and I realize that can be distracting so I do take that feedback and I accept it that there's some ideas that I that are may be really big that I need to call someone else about but I don't always realize in the moment because I'm very impulsive and when I want interaction about my latest idea I want it right then God he and Doug would just get along so well I think and do you do this in like your personal life as well like I'm like you know what I think we should move to New Zealand or let's move here or let's do this or let's do that and like we'll be somewhere and we'll be talking with people that we don't know very well and they'll come up to Doug and they'll be like so when are you guys moving to New Zealand and Doug just laughs he's like you just have to IGN like 98% of what she says you know and you know because apparently I say it really convincingly um and I'm like super passionate about it in that moment uh so he's just gotten really really good at just basically pretending like he's listening and you know smiling and yeah that sounds awesome you know and then he knows I'll forget about it by the next day um for the most part yeah he's really good at not being a buzz kill do you know what I mean right and he he may know that if he does engage with you that if he's not as enthusiastic you as you might want him to be then he's going to be irritated a yeah so it's better yeah it's better just to not engage because he knows that if he engages you're gonna engage him back and next thing you know you're talking for a couple of hours about Laura's latest idea exactly exactly yeah it's interesting I'd be interested like who does the laundry in your house you know and who does the dishes and how do you guys divide up he does both yeah see Doug does all of that stuff too W and he's a better parent than I am and I'm the one who travels you know he's he's the steady Force so really really interesting it sounds like we very similar kind of Dynamics going on yeah Liz does this ever translate into an issue with employees where they feel they're being pulled in different directions by you and by Frank uh not by Frank but by me for sure and how big an issue has that and how do you resolve it so I think I've gotten better of really keeping track of what I assigned to people and re prioritizing if need be because are you tornado I don't know if I'd call him myself that but I I definitely have got the bright shiny object thing I will work on reprioritizing or I'll tell someone that maybe I've given like 12 totally desperate things to do I can help rep prioritize that cuz something has come up that's more important than the others but I would say the other thing is that Frank when there is something really important that really needs to be done but there isn't Buy in from the team or there's just not enthusiasm he'll help me get it done so that has been from the very start that he's joined he knew that there were a lot of like strategic product projects that I felt were not moving and so when I told him I really would like for you to help be that intersection that help like make this thing move forward and he's done that over and over and so for me I'm very grateful that he's the intermediary and you know I don't think it's necessarily that the employees weren't for the idea but they they just need someone to really follow up and often times I will kind of issue proclamations but I'll Never follow up with anybody and then when they hear two weeks later that it was something that was actually important to me they're surprised because some people probably forget but with Frank in the middle he knows the things that need to move ahead and he'll help me you know leverage the team to do it but without him I'm thinking yeah people are very confused I I'm I provide confusing directions so you would need someone to play Frank's role even if it weren't Frank definitely it's funny you say that that's the trajectory that we went through is and I didn't realize it obviously until later um but when we got our general manager when we hired her six years ago I realized that she was actually a surrogate for Doug I didn't realize it at the time but Doug really played kind of that number two role and the one that would make sure that I was less confusing or you know that we had the priorities going on and that you know he's the one that he and I would talk about talk through through all these projects and blah blah blah and and then actually well long story but when when we brought on Shannon who has now filled that role Doug was able to step he he had stepped back because we had a kid um and so he became you know the parent but I didn't realize how much that how important that role is that you have that translator if you will like somebody who can translate all of these crazy Big Ideas and you know like priorities you know into something that the masses can understand and digest and doesn't drive them crazy so anyway yeah we had same thing same thing what a huge role that is it's so important you know it occurs to me that just being married is a challenge I know in in in my marriage I think it's been a healthy thing that my wife and I have both been able to go off and do our jobs on a regular basis uh separately and you know when there's been tension it it served as you know a way of clearing our heads and we come back and things that looked you know dire or don't look so dire after eight hours doing something else oh my God mine's the reverse I'm like if we didn't work together like what would we talk about I mean we have you know this shared life goal but we've done EV we do everything together you know we had worked out together we exercise together we ski together you know like I mean it's one of those sick relationships we we're just together you know for me like it would be so sad if we had different jobs and worked for different places and then he's got like this whole life I don't even really know about he's got all these co-workers I don't know and like I said even when we did work at different places like we came together on separate projects so that we could kind of work together how about you Hans do you ever feel like having that separation would be helpful and healthy yeah but he one those situations where the grass is always greener on the other side I think sure for us what really helped is because we build the business and then with building the business came the purpose of the business and that is something that we both have absolute buying into that is something that we're absolutely passionate about as opposed to the cookies which frankly it's a lot ha relationship sometimes as it is with any product the idea of building safe spaces has become our personal mission for the two of us as a couple as an entity and the way we see it is that yeah we're not going to have the kids so that's our Legacy where we are is that those are two separate things and one is there to serve the other so where we are is that no matter what the business is no matter if we choose to do something else with the business these other mission that we set ourselves to accomplish as people as immigrants as game men that is our Legacy that is our life project the cookie company is incidental to that how about you Liz do you ever think it would be easier if you had more separation and you had someone else playing the role that Frank is playing well it's actually a funny question because um we're doing a renovation on our house we're kind of transforming it from a two family to a one family and during the renovation me Frank and Lydia have all been sleeping in the same room so not only are we living in the H same house but we're literally sleeping in the same room every night since July and you know it was really difficult at first to adjust to that but I have to say like kind of are enjoying spending more time together and especially with our daughter because she's at the age where she would just sit in her room alone you know on her phone for hours and hours and now poor her she's kind of forced to hang out with us all the time so in terms of our physical separation right now I've been surprised that we've been okay with this cramped quarters um but I would say in terms of just other types of Separation not just physical we each have our own Hobbies so I'm really into like DIY home projects he doesn't care at all about it so this renovation for me has been like I'm really enjoying picking out tile and choosing doors and all these things that he has no interest in and that's that's fine he defers to me on that but he's a musician and so then his time outside of the house old and outside of work and parenting is composing and Performing music and so we know that because we have our own Hobbies it not only strengthens our marriage but it also strengthens our work relationship because we have a strong marriage and I know that's like very difficult to achieve but I think we're kind of uniquely like we just click we click we don't always get along but our life works really well but I don't think it would be if we didn't each have our own Hobbies it's kind of conventional wisdom that any Business Partnership should have an agreement at the beginning that stipulates what would happen if the partnership ends now I know none of you will ever need this but I'm I'm wondering if each of you has that kind of agreement with your spouses in other words I mean do you know what would happen to the business if your marriage relationship ended for whatever reason we've talked about it and is where we are is we could probably keep it going even if the other one was to disappear a very Frank conversation that we had to have not a great moment in their relationship of course in our case a lot of it has to do with our ability to stay in the country so he's not like she was like oh I'm GNA find a job but still something that we are I guess if it if push came to shop we're prepared to do how about you Laura yeah we don't have anything like written down but um in the dream dreams that I have my abandonment dreams which happen when I travel a lot um I get the business um I get the dogs uh Doug will have full custody of Huck um you know we've got it all split out I mean realistically I would probably run the business because I'm the one who's on the ground more often and Doug has no deep desire to work forever um and apparently I'm more wired to work forever and I have more support than he does on the business side of it so I'm assuming that that's what would happen how about you Liz so we've never discussed it I can say though that I think our marriage has improved since he joined the business so I guess it feels like the conversation is less applicable now than it would have been a couple of years ago when our marriage wasn't as strong but I guess I just figured that if something happened with the marriage that we would just split the business 50/50 in terms of ownership and then see whether or not we could still work together and I kind of feel like we could but it's not something I have really thought about but if I do I feel like it would probably be somewhat simple because I think we would just understand it's 5050 and then we'll figure something out with whether the company continues and who's in leadership like I don't know I feel like maybe it's not that difficult to figure out I would say if if if you look at the things that attracted you to your partner like in Frank's case he's he is very intelligent he's very fun he's fun to be around so that's kind of on the personal side What attracted me to him when I see him being smart and funny in the workplace it actually it kind of this is cheesy but it kind of rekindles the original love because I see people see him as smart and funny and it I don't know sometimes you don't always see your spouse in the way that you originally came to know them and so that I've found that I really admire him in the workplace and it brings me back to when I first met him like really what I thought well you know when we went into this I kind of thought I might have to offer each of your spouses equal time but I don't know that that's necessary you you guys are you guys were very kind to your spouses and I'm sure they'll appre appreciate that my thanks to Liz picarazzi Hans shy and Laura Xander thanks for sharing guys wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's L RN at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess dubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone